‘Native Gardens’ blooms with laughs
Neighbors’ culture clashes spark topical comedy
Many things have happened in the political landscape since Karen Zacarias wrote her cultureclash-driven comedic play “Native Gardens” in 2015, and almost all of them would seem to make the work more timely than ever.
After all, it’s about an older white couple and a young Latin couple entangled in an ugly neighbor-vs.neighbor battle that revolves around — get this — a wall. (OK, in this case it’s a crappy chain-link fence, but a metaphor’s a metaphor, right?)
But while “Native Gardens” does deliver one very obvious Donald Trump’s wall joke (it works beautifully) the play is more clever than cutting edge. And it would be a mistake to come to this stage comedy, now playing at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center, expecting a show crackling with rippedfrom-the-headlines urgency. If anything, it’s more a play that uses timely topics to explore the timeless nature of the ways people create and nurture animosities as defense mechanisms. And rather than strike a political or moral chord, it explores how easy it is for any of us to resort to hurtful pettiness when our priorities are challenged. It’s 90 minutes of topical comedy that gently invites us to search our souls when it’s over.
As presented by Center Repertory Company, “Gardens” is an entertaining night of theater that makes the most out of Zacarias’ crisp, funny dialogue, which often has the feel of a slightly edgy, much-betterthan-average sitcom. Assuredly helmed by Center Rep artistic director Michael Butler, who has a real affinity for stage comedy, this production gets pretty much everything right, starting with an engaging cast of four primary actors who not only perform their parts well but seem to be having a blast the entire time.
Set in a tony, established Washington, D.C., neighborhood, “Gardens” revolves around two couples who are not as different as they might seem.
Frank (J. Michael Flynn) is a longtime federal employee whose true passion is the proper English garden he maintains (with a lot of pesticide) in his backyard, almost obsessively dreaming of winning a local horticultural society contest. His wife, Virginia (Domenique Lozano), is an engineer at a male-dominated Defense Department contractor, used to being slighted by her co-workers.
Their brand-new neighbors are Pablo (Raúl Ramón Bencomo), a lawyer at a high-powered firm who yearns to make partner and prove he is more than a token Latin hire, and Tania (Livia Gomes Demarchi), a pregnant (as in any day now) Ph.D. candidate with her own garden dreams (sustainable native plants and
no pesticides) that could not be more different from Frank’s. Each of the four is vibrant, likable and admirable in their own way, yet saddled with the sorts of agendas and prejudices we all carry.
Frank and Virginia assume their new neighbors are Mexicans (they’re not) who must therefore like red wine and chocolate. Pablo and Tania view their new neighbors as pleasant relics of a bygone era. (“It’s like having the ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ right next door,” says an adoring Tania.)
But it’s not long before the culture clashes begin, set in motion by the discovery that a fence between the couples’ yards has been mislaid, denying Pablo and Tania 2 feet of property, and fueled by the fact that Frank’s big garden contest and Pablo’s apparently make-or-break barbecue party for his law firm take place in the contested backyard on the same weekend.
Yes, it’s a pretty flimsy premise for a throw-down, but how many of us haven’t gone to the mats over something that turns out, in retrospect, to be pretty silly? And of course, just when it seems a solution to the standoff is at hand, a new log is added to the fire. Almost every conceivable social grievance — ageism, sexism, racism, white entitlement, reverse discrimination, bad gardeningism — gets trotted out at some point.
Besides Zacarias’ clever script and the appealing four main characters (not to mention some nifty between-scenes dancing by Glenn Delos Santos, Justin P. Lopez and Carleena Manzi, all of whom play landscapers), a true star of the show is Sean Fanning’s set, depicting two stately but aged residential homes and their busy backyards, with lawn furniture, a birdbath, old-fashioned barbecue set and that crappy chain-link fence. And props designer Alyssa Tryon gets, ahem, props for designing Frank’s garden, which is so colorfully dazzling you’ll be tempted to swipe a flower for your own garden. (Don’t worry, we’re pretty sure the pesticides he uses are fake.)